Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/60

 lapse of that river and of human life. As this current, with its floating twigs and leaves, so did all things pass in review before us; while far away, in cities and marts on this very stream, the old routine was proceeding still.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

as the poet says; and yet the ebb always balanced the flow, and the shores were unchanged, but in longer periods than we can measure. Now and then we had to muster all our energy to get round a point where the river broke rippling over rocks, and the maples trailed their branches in the stream. There is generally a backwater or eddy on the sides of the stream, which the boatman takes advantage of.

The hardest material obeys the same law with the most fluid. Trees are but rivers of sap and woody fibre, flowing from the atmosphere and emptying into the earth by their trunks; as their roots, on the other hand, flow upward to the surface. And in the heavens there are rivers of stars and Milky Ways. There are rivers of rock on [12]